


know what a river can be

by agletbaby



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Brazil Arc, Character Study, Gen, Haikyuu Chapter 402, Manga Spoilers, Olympics, Post-Time Skip, Travel, mixed metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25424674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agletbaby/pseuds/agletbaby
Summary: Oikawa at the water. Again and again.On the edge of California, he says, “I’ve never been to a beach facing west before. It's weird, looking in this direction. It’s just what I already know.”“A lot’s changed there,” Iwaizumi replies vaguely, before something clicks. The moment it does is visible on his face. “Ah. I still thought you were planning to come back to Japan."
Comments: 48
Kudos: 154





	know what a river can be

**Author's Note:**

> 'Know what a river can be – a friend, a  
> Companion, a hint of heaven.  
> “Isn’t this somewhat overplayed?”  
> I said: it can be a friend. Companion. A hint of heaven.'  
> ( _From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink_ , Mary Oliver)
> 
> 'I am a part of all that I have met'  
> ( _Ulysses_ , Tennyson)

The first time Oikawa ever pulls off a jump serve in a match, it feels like the ball takes forever to get to the other side of the court. For hours, really, it spins through the air with all the gravity of a planet which knows exactly where it’s going, but is in no rush to get there. The slowness is an illusion though: the ball crashes to earth between two players, round-eyed at being so totally unable to react in time.

It’s the best.

By the end of middle school, though, Oikawa’s serves move at a normal speed. In fact, they only get faster, as he gets better and better at them. Later, someone (it’s Hanamaki, but Oikawa doesn’t want to admit that he’s learnt anything from him) tells him that the first time something happens to you, it always seems slower because you're processing what the hell is going on. But, after you’ve done it twice, or a thousand times, your brain shrugs off what’s happening and lets it speed by.

So, it’s just a case of continuing to do new things, forever. That’s it. He can do that.

“Sure. Your first new thing could be reacting normally to cool facts.” replies Hanamaki, deadpan. Then he adds, “What are you even talking about anyway? People are generally shit when they start a new thing, and you and your ego would hate that.”

“Why would you want everything to go slow?” asks Yuda, leaning across the aisle to butt into the conversation. “I always find that boring, like when you’re going somewhere for the first time and it just takes so long to get there. It’s like, hurry up.”

Oikawa _tch_ es. “The journey is what it’s about. The anticipation.”

“Well I, personally, hope we get there soon,” Hanamaki says. “It’ll get dark.”

“It’s only five more minutes,” Iwaizumi calls over, before instantly returning to his conversation with Matsukawa. This is a long established tactic to avoid getting sucked into whatever nonsense conversation Oikawa inevitably manages to build up around himself. His words, from the time Oikawa called him out on it.

The five of them are on a train, on their way to finally fulfil an agreement-slash-joke made – oh, Oikawa doesn’t even know when, some point in their first year – to visit Matsuhima with Matsukawa. They’ve really left it to the last minute, given their last exam of high school was today. Ah, endings. Oikawa isn’t really sad, not right now, but he could muster a melodramatic speech if called upon, which would maybe do the trick.

It was a last minute suggestion, made by Iwaizumi, actually, outside the exam hall and based only on the sheer coincidence of them all finishing at the same time: “Why not? We may as well celebrate, it’s less lame than just going home. Definitely less lame than crashing volleyball practice.” (Which, yes, was Oikawa’s plan. He knows what he likes. He better. He’s going to spend the rest of his life doing it, after all.)

And, well, why not? So here they are, getting ready to get off at Matsushima-Kaigan Station. It’s too late in the day and early in the year to really do anything – the ferry to the islands that make the area a tourist destination isn’t even running – but there’s still the sea to see, and it’s been clear all day, so there should be a sunset too. And, of course, they can make lots of ‘Matsu’ jokes.

Outside, it’s cold.

“It’s cold,” says Oikawa, rubbing his hands together dramatically.

“Don’t be a baby,” says Matsukawa, at the same time that Hanamaki says. “Just get warmer.”

Oikawa pouts at them, but then responds in his bubbliest voice. “Iwa-chan was right that today’s a celebration. I’m celebrating never having to see you two monsters again.”

“Going to a different continent just to get away, huh.”

“As if I’d ever let someone as unimportant as you dictate my life decisions.”

“Yuda,” interrupts Iwaizumi, leaving Oikawa with the much deserved final word. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

Yuda, who has been a bit quiet since getting off the train, makes a non-committal noise. “Probably not?”

“We can’t take you anywhere,” complains Hanamaki.

He’s wrong though, because they manage to get Yuda to make the five minute walk from the station to the waterfront in relative peace. It’s not very exciting, Oikawa thinks (he’s already looking ahead to next year, big endless South American beaches, even though he knows that San Juan is tragically very landlocked), with the road right by them and a clunky sea wall instead of sand. Still, they can see a couple of islands, so tick for the Matsushima experience.

They end up stood in a row against the wall, kind of like they’re waiting to shake hands with a ghostly opposing team, except Oikawa is leaning over as much as possible, towards the sea and sky. The latter is going a fun shade of purple as the evening gathers, which makes them all look otherworldly, so there’s some chat about it being the apocalypse happening besides him, at least until Iwaizumi suddenly hits his own head with his hand.

“We’re facing east, the sun’s going to set behind us. This is it.”

“Isn’t it just,” says Matsukawa.

“Idiotzumi,” Hanamaki contributes fondly. “Still, this is pretty cool.” He considers his hands in the weird light. “Spooky.”

“The whole point of sunsets is that you end up not seeing the sun anyway,” adds Yuda. “We’re just one step ahead.”

“Don’t humour me.”

Oikawa isn’t really listening, still straining against the wall – something about the sea, about the day, about the sunless purple glow is making him restless and ready to go, like the moment between the end of a warmup and the start of a game. It feels like something is about to happen. _The rest of your life_ , a voice calls up from the back of his mind.

“Hey, Oikawa,” says Yuda suddenly. Or maybe it's not suddenly, but it drags him back to the present quick. “That’s where you’re going.” He points directly forwards, into the bay, towards the distance.

“One of the islands?” asks Matsukawa, raising an eyebrow. “Are you going to castaway Oikawa in Matsushima?”

Yuda frowns. “Obviously not. Argentina’s that way.”

“Is it actually?”

“I have a compass app on my phone,” says Hanamaki, digging into his pocket. “We can check.”

“No– It’s not– It’s the metaphor of the thing! Over the ocean, you know.”

“I appreciate it, Yudacchi,” Oikawa says magnanimously. “Very touching.”

And it is, dammit, even though he’s trying hard to be cool about this whole situation. Something about someone looking at the sea and thinking of Oikawa, on the other side of it. He gets introspective enough on the train ride back that Hanamaki warns him not to say anything gooey and Iwaizumi punches him in the arm for good measure.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever come back here again. He might get the train to Matsushima-Kaigan, sure, but he won’t be _here_.

Later, yet again, when he’s on his agonisingly long flight across the Pacific Ocean (it’s quicker when he flies back, quicker again when he returns) he looks down at the clouds and thinks of the inevitable sea beneath, and Yuda pointing across it, and of everyone and everything behind him: Hanamaki and Matsukawa, Sendai and Aoba Johsai and the school gym, and further back, Kitagawa Daiichi and Iwaizumi, and all the various teammates and opponents and courts and, oh, old shoes and knee braces and so on and so on, all the random junk of his life, which has been tidied up into two suitcases in the hold and one carry-on bag and one body, all on this plane.

Argentina has almost 5000km of coastline, and none of it is a 30 minute, after-school train ride away from San Juan. None of it rests against the Pacific. In his seat, leaning against the plane window, Oikawa tries to think about doing new things, but mostly thinks about old ones.

One problem with things you're yet to do, he thinks (with all the wisdom that leaving home for the first time five hours ago bestows upon a person), is that you have to rely on your imagination, which is pretty insufficient when compared to actual memories, freshly made.

Another problem is that for every first, there must be a last. And another is that every new thing eventually becomes an old thing. Because there’s always another, another, another.

And then that’s it.

But. He never wants to settle. He knows that. The plane flies on, unbothered by its passengers.

///

Oikawa’s first few weeks in Argentina move like continents. More bluntly: everything is hard and it all takes forever. Even trying to find the noodles in the convenience store is a lifelong quest: by the time he locates them, he feels like an old man, with a real hankering for the _nikujaga_ his grandfather always insisted was best.

Still, practices are good. Okay, well, no. They’re not good exactly. He has no idea what’s going on, because his Spanish is laughable and his English barely better, despite his excellent grades. But all the movement he’s trained into his body is not uselessly disarrayed across the court. It remains in his muscles, as solid as the ground; it just needs to be built on, polished.

And yes, he’s frighteningly aware he needs more experience, that a professional league is on a different level, but that’s why he’s here. He adjusts to sitting on the bench, to being outpaced, to sucking, but only for now. He doesn’t let it become habit.

When he serves, the ball is an astronomical object, spinning in space.

The whole time, wherever he is in San Juan, Oikawa is aware that he is not in Japan. It’s not just the language or the store layouts; it’s the way it makes him a new person. He is no longer Oikawa Tooru: high school volleyball player. Now, he’s Oikawa Tooru: _international_ volleyball player. Which is to say, he’s someone who lives somewhere else. His world is expanding past the limits he’d unconsciously always assumed for himself.

Ugh, he’s so cool.

**makki [00:15 am]:** the fact that you are doing something cool

 **makki [00:15 am]:** does not mean you are cool

 **makki [00:16 am]:** coincidence does not imply correlation

 **mattsun [01:01 am]:** i’ll give you this oikawa, you’ve made leaving sendai for college seem a lot more acceptable

 **makki [01:06 am]:** ikr!

 **makki [01:08 am]:** whenever my parents bug me to come home more

 **makki [01:08 am]:** i can just tell them, well at least i’m still in japan ^.^

 **iwa-chan [02:42 am]:** at least he’s good for something

 **mattsun [02:49 am]:** makes a change

 **oikawa [07:14 am]:** makki, you really think i’m doing something cool?

 **oikawa [07:14 am]:** awww

And eventually, cool becomes normal. Things speed up around Oikawa and, more slowly, he improves. He adjusts to the team. His English settles in, although his Spanish – which he started learning from scratch a few months ago, armed with nothing but a going-away gift dictionary and a free app – still fits his mouth strangely. And on court, volleyball is still volleyball, even if the libero can serve sometimes and no one understands what he means by ‘nice kill’, and Oikawa knows volleyball like nothing else.

He’s not a starter, but he works hard. In practice, he does serve after serve after serve; he’ll hit it until _something_ breaks. The floor. His fingers. Hopefully, someone else’s resolve. Ha ha. He doesn’t make the joke out loud because he doesn't know if it’ll land. And he’s trying to be nicer, he supposes, to much long-distance scepticism from Iwaizumi.

He gets brought on during a few matches, at first as a pinch server and then as a substitute, and each additional minute of game time is an inch of progress more. After a few months Coach Blanco asks Oikawa to join the team for a weekend of practice matches in Buenos Aires, as the main setter. He says yes. He says it very calmly and professionally, and then he goes home and jumps around his tiny bedroom for five minutes straight like a kid bouncing on a bed. After that he watches league matches until early afternoon, Japanese time.

The opportunity comes at a good time. He’s just got settled enough in San Juan to feel comfortable leaving it. He's been catching himself calling his apartment home, which means it’s somewhere to come back to.

Oikawa has been pleasant – genuinely, honestly and for real – to his teammates. He’s worked hard to integrate himself with them off court as well as on, but it doesn’t feel easy. There’s the language, there’s the culture, and there’s the fact he’s only just an adult, whilst a lot of the guys on the team have, like, houses and cars and marriages. He can’t exactly give them a cutesy nickname (he’s not even sure how to do that outside of Japanese), let himself be mocked and think that’s enough. He respects them! 

He wants them to respect him.

So he decides he’ll use the fifteen hour coach journey to Buenos Aires to make that happen. It’s not like there’s anything better to do with all that time, except sleep through the day, and jetlag is still too fresh and painful a memory to risk that. Above the bump and burr of the bus, Oikawa asks lots of questions about the scenery and where’s worth visiting, and he makes Matías, his seatmate, promise to come back and see it all with him. He gets people to explain their jokes and slow down when their Spanish gets too fast, instead of just smiling dumbly, and some of them turn out to be pretty funny, actually.

Sometimes, making conversation feels like setting. Before he acts, he has to work out where each player wants the ball to be sent, what response they want to hear most. Iwaizumi would accuse him of being inauthentic for this, Oikawa thinks, but he’s not. Eventually, he’ll adjust it, send the toss he wants them to be able to hit, and not just the one they want. But the players have to be comfortable with him first.

Oikawa ends up talking about Aoba Johsai, his mission to get Kyoutani on the team, and if he feels himself getting slightly whiny when he mentions that Iwaizumi got much more respect than him, well, the guys around him only seem to find it funny. They begin to supply their own high school stories, and that’s useful too: years old complaints and jokes about how annoying so-and-so was give Oikawa things to avoid. By the time he gets off the bus, now slightly queasy at the lack of motion, he feels good. He feels ready to be part of the team all over again; ready to count on them.

The thing Oikawa likes about practice matches – has always liked, when he wasn’t too wrapped up in his own spectacle to think about it – is that it doesn’t matter if you win or not. You play the number of matches you’re going to play, and if you lose, the court doesn’t crack open and leave a void in the middle of your life. You get to stay on.

In practice matches, Oikawa can just think about each moment of the game as it is. His body moves, as it always has. The ball does too. Fingertips to palm to floor.

One to two to three. And then another.

Someone’s calling for another.

Which is all to say that, by the end of the week, he doesn’t have any idea how many games they’ve won or lost. But he can remember where everyone likes their toss to be sent to. As always, the matches are tough and not exactly fun, but they are something to be proud of.

They play some games with a team based in La Plata, an hour south east of Buenos Aires, and the road they take treds a careful distance along the edge of– 

“The sea!” says Oikawa, pressing against the window. Then he retracts and tries to look cool.

Matías laughs at him. “No, a river. _Río de la Plata_. It’s the widest river in the world.”

“Huh.” It looks like the sea though, stretching out into the distance, with no edge in sight. “Does it go to the Atlantic Ocean?” he asks. 

Matías affirms that yeah, it does, if you go like a hundred and fifty kilometers east, and Oikawa smiles genuinely at him. “I’ve never seen the Atlantic before,” he says. “This is a whole new part of the world.”

Matías laughs again. He’s a very jovial type. Oikawa has that noted. “Had you not worked that out already?” he asks.

Oikawa knows he’s joking, but he’s struck anew. If their bus were just to keep going, forward, forward, they’d reach an ocean. He doesn’t know anyone on the other side of this one, not in Italy or Cameroon or anywhere, in the whole nebulous space of _over there_. Even after the sea reaches land, all he can imagine is a stretch of emptiness, a blank space devoid of Oikawa. He needs to get famous. Or visit and make some friends-slash-have a dramatic love affair. Something.

He pulls a blank face. “You mean I’m not in Japan right now?”

“Sorry to tell you like this. It’s all still water, though.”

“Pardon?” Oikawa wonders whether his English has hiccuped and he’s missed something, because although Matías’s tone hadn’t changed between the two statements, he's pretty sure they're unrelated.

“The river, and the Atlantic and all the other oceans. It’s all just water. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

“You should work in tourism.”

“Thank you.”

Oikawa gets quiet for the rest of the journey, leaning his head against the window and watching for flickers of silver between the trees and buildings by the side of the road. The ball bounces like always, and water’s still water, but Oikawa’s also a long way from home. The drive to La Plata, parallel with the river that’s almost the ocean, but not quite, not yet, takes forever.

When Oikawa plays his first official match as a starter, he sends the first ball to Matías. It is a perfect set, just how he likes them, and although to Oikawa, it seems like he is watching the spike in slow motion, when the ball hits the floor it is completely inevitable.

///

Rio is all beach.

That’s what it feels like, anyway, with sand stretching for miles and miles and the whole rest of the city leaning in towards the ocean. The first time Oikawa visited – for practice matches, a regular part of his life now – he’d taken off his trainers, tucked his socks neatly inside, and went wheeling down the sand and into the sea. Screw Matías, he's never been to the Atlantic before, so he’s claiming this as a first, wiggling his toes in all new water.

He’d had to retread his way back afterwards, dry sand sticking to his wet feet, and then he’d padded along on the beach, clutching his shoes because he couldn’t put them back on. The guys he was with refused to join him on the sand, staying on the concrete walkway above the beach no matter how much he wheedled at them, leaving him awkwardly at arms length for the whole walk. It was a very troubling experience. So, on this, his second trip, he’s planning to learn from his mistakes and do the mature thing, which is keeping his shoes on and admiring the beach from solid ground. He will join them in being a more adult adult. Except.

Except Oikawa is absolutely haunted by his past.

Hinata appears over the sand and against the dark sky, bright and stark in his white t-shirt. He is kind of like a ghost, in that this whole situation is absolutely unreal. Oikawa almost wonders whether he’s here to impart some moral, like a spirit from a Christmas story, but once Hinata explains that he’s come to Brazil for beach volleyball, to train, Oikawa realises that the kid’s not here for anyone except himself.

And he ends up dragged back to the beach anyway. Away from all his new teammates and back to high school. 

They get dinner first, though, and it’s nice to speak Japanese and to answer questions without having to explain the basics of his life first (like no, he doesn’t come from Tokyo, there are other places in Japan, and yes, he did choose to move across the world immediately after high school and he made that choice on purpose), because Hinata already knows that stuff, even if they barely know each other. That’s actually a new feeling now. Oikawa’s half-forgotten what that sort of intrinsic knowledge is like, the ease of assumptions.

Hinata is very. Well. He’s a lot. He’s not good at beach volleyball, really, yet: he’s clearly still working on the basics, and even Oikawa, who doesn’t know what the basics are, can see that. But that’s kind of how he was when they played in high school too. Like, he should have been awful. And he wasn't. What’s changed is that now, Hinata knows how much he can improve.

“You’re braver than me,” Oikawa tells him, at the end of that first night, after they’ve been thoroughly beaten, after Hinata has explained how he wants to level up from here. They’re walking back toward Oikawa’s hotel, his teammates having totally abandoned him. Oikawa has no idea where they are, but Hinata seems to believe he can stop them from getting lost, even though he hasn’t been here long. Oikawa wants to be sceptical, except that Hinata is confidence-soaked and hard to refuse, harder still to resist. “Coming all the way out here, starting everything again. The days must drag by. And you're so young.”

Hinata tilts his head at him. “Didn’t you do the same thing, though?”

“Mm. Volleyball’s not new to me though.” It's not like beach volleyball. He's been walking on concrete whilst Hinata's run right onto the sand, Oikawa thinks.

Hinata shrugs. “Like I said, it’s fun to get better. Anyway, Oikawa-san, you’re not that much older than me anymore!”

“I'm as much older than you as I was before.”

“I’m older now than you were when we met!” Hinata looks genuinely victorious at that, as though the entirety of time has been a set up, just to bestow him this tiny, inevitable victory. “I would be your senpai.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I’m much too cool,” Oikawa defends himself on reflex, preening a little for effect.

“I think I’m pretty cool! I’m definitely cooler than you are at beach volleyball right now.”

Oikawa can still feel the sand in his mouth, it’s true. “I miss when you were too scared to talk to me.”

“I was never too scared to talk–”

“Just to get full sentences out.” They both laugh. “Well, okay then, I’ll have to play with you again and prove that I'm cool at everything.”

Hinata grins at that, completely and totally, and Oikawa remembers that he’s on his own. Even when Oikawa was feeling his worst, totally unmoored in San Juan, he had practice everyday with teammates who were professionally required to include him. Hinata has to get up and take himself to the beach and force people to pay attention to him. And his only help is some guy from Shiratorizawa, which cancels out, because ew.

It’s more than just learning a new sport. He’s having to prove himself, all over again. 

That night, Oikawa feels inadequate in a way he hasn’t since he was in the same club as Kageyama. It’s not the inadequacy of facing someone stronger on the other side of the net, but of running in parallel to someone who’s accelerating faster than he can. It makes Oikawa want to intensify his workout routine, or totally change who he is as a person, or something.

On Oikawa’s last day in Rio, they end up sat in the sand – well, Hinata is sprawled out, flat on his back – but Oikawa sits, looking out to sea. Or towards the sea, at least. It’s dark, the end of a pretty intense day of practice matches for Oikawa and whatever it is Hinata does when he’s not on the beach for him, so the water isn’t distinguishable. It’s just the same black as the sky, except for a few winking glints, where the city’s lights have got caught in the waves.

They’ve just played a match so they’re both tired and quieter than usual. Beach volleyball takes a lot of effort, and the games still feel longer than they are, so a rest is probably needed. Except, the stillness they’ve fallen into puts Oikawa on edge. Hinata going quiet is dangerous, he’s realised, both on court and off. The latter is when he springs his crazy ambition on you.

“Did Tobio-chan like our selfie, in the end?” Oikawa asks, to break the silence and because he hopes it’s an opportunity to be smug.

Hinata makes a noise which is sort of an affirmative, but not quite. “He saw it. He doesn’t really respond to messages unless you ask him a question or tell him you’re going to beat him.”

“That figures. He’s a pretty useless person to be friends with, huh?”

“Yep!” says Hinata brightly, making Oikawa laugh.

“I bet you miss him though. Him and his tosses.” Oikawa pulls a face, to make it clear that missing Kageyama is an abhorrent concept.

“It’s so funny to think about how, if someone’d told me in middle school I’d end up on a team with _that guy_ , I’d never believe them. Let alone the idea of being friends with him! Even in Karasuno. Sometimes I’m still not sure about it, but I think that’s just his face.” Hinata stretches out further, pushing his hands into the sand and ignoring the core of Oikawa’s point. The missing. “There’s definitely been some weird twists, huh! Like me and the Grand King playing beach volleyball!”

“Stranger things have happened.” Oikawa has a sudden vision of Kageyama at Kitagawa Daiichi, the tosses Kindaichi refused to think about reaching until almost a year at Aoba Johsai, and how that has become this: Hinata sat here with Kageyama in his phone background. Or even before that, Kageyama turning up at Oikawa’s nephew’s volleyball club (yet another improbable meeting) and asking for his advice. Same as always, except that, for the first time, Kageyama had been motivated by something other than his own burning, selfish drive. Someone other. Oikawa wonders if he’d first worked out that Hinata was going to do big things on the court, or whether it was Kageyama’s request that made him realise, ah, that short guy is something else.

“This is definitely weird.” Hinata replies.

“Well, did you hear Iwa-chan – Iwaizumi from Seijou, our ace, do you remember him? – randomly met Ushiwaka in California?”

Hinata has, annoyingly, depriving Oikawa of a chance to complain about that whole situation, but he smoothly transitions into complaining about Kageyama and Ushijima being on the same team instead.

Hinata knows a lot about the inner workings of the Schweiden Adlers, thanks to the whole Kageyama friendship thing, so they spend a while delightedly speculating on all the various dramas and dynamics they can imagine for the team. It’s fun, and a nice change. Oikawa can’t be as mean in English as he can in Japanese, so he really makes the most of this opportunity.

After a bit, though, Oikawa realises Hinata’s just lapsed into recounting impressive moments from V. League matches, which he doesn’t care for. There’s a reason he (claims he) hasn’t seen any of Kageyama’s games. To derail this, he asks the first question which comes into his mind when he looks at their surroundings, which is:

“Had you seen the Atlantic before you came here?”

“Nope! Huh, it’s pretty cool being by a whole new ocean. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You don’t think all water’s the same?”

Hinata gives him a funny look, like, what-are-you-talking-about, which hurts a bit, coming from this kid. Well, not a kid. Oikawa has been thinking he should treat Hinata as more mature. He immediately disgards that idea when Hinata responds. “In Japan, the sea sounds like, ‘phwosh phwosh’, but here it’s more ‘krurrr’, you know? Pretty different.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, really? I’d have thought you’d get it.”

“Not even a bit.” Oikawa hums, and then points out to sea. “Do you know anyone over there?”

“Over– In the sea?”

“No! The other side.”

“Right!” Hinata says, then immediately looks blank. “Wait. What’s– what is the other side? Like, Europe?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”

“Hm, okay. So, Nishinoya is currently over there, somewhere. He’s travelling all around the world.” Hinata gets out his phone, and shows Oikawa a message thread which is mostly Karasuno’s libero posing in front of various postcard views, and exclamation marks instead of real responses.

“He always seemed like a cool guy.”

“He is! And then, hm–” Hinata tilts his head, screws up his face in thought. “I know a guy who’s half-Russian, but he lives in Japan, so I guess that doesn’t count. And I think that’s it. But Kageyama’s planning to go abroad, so maybe he’ll be someone else I know.” He makes a funny expression at that. Competitiveness, Oikawa thinks. But not completely.

“Well, we beat him to that,” he says, throwing his head back dramatically, and raising his arms to gesture at the beach – the continent – around them. “Now, if Kageyama goes abroad, he’ll just be copying us!”

“Yeah! We win!” They laugh together, almost totally without malice. Then Hinata asks, “What about you?” and points too, away from Oikawa and the beach. East. Forwards.

“I don’t know anyone, yet,” Oikawa begins, and then he turns away from Hinata, levelling his eyes at the horizon, or where he thinks the horizon is, feeling the intensity rise up and spread across his face like a hot blush. “But one day soon, they’ll know me.”

Hintata does a little intake of breath, which makes Oikawa whip back to him, almost concerned, but he’s just looking all starry-eyed. “That's so cool!”

“Of course.”

Hinata was right, people really do play volleyball late here, and they’re in the post-match part of the night now, making it’s so late that it almost loops around to early. Oikawa is seized by the awareness that he may never come back _here_ , not to this spot, this time. That most people he knows will never make it here at all.

“ _Never the same river twice_ ,” he says in English. His life as a succession of bodies of water. He looks in direction of the sea.

“What?” Hinata replies in Japanese. The bluntness with which he sometimes speaks makes Oikawa think of school; people yelling for clarification across the classroom, Hanamaki and Matsukawa dryly shutting down his most poetic moments. He's on the edge of homesickness again.

“Do you want to watch the sunrise?” he asks. They are facing east, after all. They’ll be able to see it.

Hinata mumbles something about sleep schedules and keeping healthy, but Oikawa cajouls him, levering his power as an elder, talking about all the wisdom he’s gained in the last few years and how Hinata will only be young once, after all, and he gives in pretty easily.

It’s a victory, at least until Hinata falls asleep half an hour later, flat out on the sand again, so Oikawa fiddles with his phone and regrets his choices. This is boring. He’s bored.

**oikawa [01:06]:** im bored

 **iwa-chan [01:12]:** isn’t it the middle of the night there?

 **oikawa [01:12]:** hehe

 **iwa-chan [01:13]:** go to sleep

 **mattsun [01:14]:** no one reply to oikawa until it’s a reasonable time for him to be awake.

 **oikawa [01:16]:** no fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 **oikawa [01:18]:** [gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif]

 **oikawa [01:34]:** [gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif]

 **makki [01:42]:** it’s bc we care

 **mattsun [01:44]:** that counts as replying, hanamaki. also i don't care it's just funny

 **oikawa [01:48]:** [gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif][gif]

 **mattsun [01:52]:** look. you encouraged him

 **oikawa [01:53]:** you’ll never destroy my spirit

 **makki [01:55]:** uh oh

 **makki [01:55]:** i can fix this

 **makki** removed **oikawa** from the chat **[01:57]**

Oikawa’s seen the sunrise before, but normally that’s because he gets up early. A few times, he’s ended up so engrossed in thinking about something (volleyball; it’s almost guaranteed to be volleyball) that by the time he goes to sleep, his thin blinds have gone grey and his window is a square of dull light, but it’s never really been on purpose before. This is a first. He makes a note to tell Hanamaki – who is now and forever the archivist of Oikawa’s personal bucket list, whether he wants to be or not – when he gets re-added to the group chat and can forgive him.

Oikawa’s never seen the sunrise over the sea, either. He’s seen a sunset, but that was a different continent, a different time, even if it was the same direction.

Now, though, it’s dark. Nothing new has happened yet. Except everything that is happening right now. Hinata lets out a snore, like he’s reminding Oikawa of the fact that he is, inexplicably, here.

If he were Hinata, Oikawa thinks, he would want to ask Oikawa if he has any regrets from high school; what he thinks he could have done differently. No, actually, that’s not true at all. Hinata probably doesn’t care. Oikawa just wants to be asked because he’s spent the last four years chewing over answers to those questions, shifting them around his mouth like gum, and Hinata is the closest he’s gotten to being able to spit them out.

If he were Hinata, Hinata wouldn’t be asleep. But he probably wouldn’t be in Brazil either. If Oikawa were to be deposited in his body, say, when he started at Karasuno, that body – Hinata’s, Oikawa’s – would probably still be wobbling about in Japan. Benched through high school. Playing for some local club. Quit. He can imagine it: without the drive to level up, with Oikawa’s need to cling to something that he knows (volleyball, Iwaizumi; knowing what he's doing, being good), Hinata’s body goes nowhere. It isn’t sprawled out, star-shaped, on a Brazilian beach. It doesn’t surpass its own limitations. It stops before it’s even worked out what its limitations are. Oikawa would be able to do nothing for it.

 _Good thing you have your own body, then,_ says a voice in Oikawa’s head. It’s not his.

Maybe it’s Iwaizumi, using a lifetime of knowledge to infiltrate his subconscious and tell him not to be an idiot. Or else the others in his year, reliably a mocking chorus. Hinata, wanting him to stop being weird and stick to his own body – it’s cool! Kageyama, twelve years old and wanting so much to be able to do what he can. Ushijima, steadfast in both admiring Oikawa and not understanding him at all. Blanco, in the same tone as the one he used to explain that limitations need to be found before they can be called finite. Or maybe it’s just the sea, whispering at him.

Or perhaps, it's actually just that Oikawa needs to get some sleep.

His body, the one he has always had, still aches from earlier, from falling into and jumping away from the sand, and before that, the firm shine of a sports hall floor. And before that, and before that, and before that. Another, another, another. He always goes back to volleyball, asks to play again. He thinks that it’s pretty great to love something.

Even better to remember why. To know that he isn't just going in this direction because it happens to be the way the river flows, but because he has chosen the current.

Without really knowing why, he starts laughing to himself, or maybe to the beach, or to the whole of South America. That wakes Hinata up, and Oikawa is gratified to find that he clearly is still entitled to some respect as a senior, because he doesn’t actually get called weird, even though Hinata is clearly thinking it.

He asks Hinata what his plans for the future are, and Hinata has a lot and they’re all very impressive, so they talk about them for a suitably appreciative amount of time. There's not actually that much to say, though: Hinata is planning to show, not tell. So then they go backwards, a little, and Hintata starts talking about what Aoba Johsai was like to play, post-Oikawa.

It’s funny to hear about it from the other side of the net. Oikawa knows the outline, results of tournaments and that they worked hard and all that stuff that you just _say_ after yet another loss, but Yahaba’s texts were always carefully deferential, and Kunimi’s too brief to really communicate what Hinata can. Which is that Kyoutani continued to be a terror, just as planned, and Kindaichi was “always really annoying. That’s a compliment though!”. He even seems to be particularly impressed by Watari, which is funny because Oikawa always thought Hinata didn’t know what a recieve was. Wait, no, that’s unfair. Hinata has definitely learnt.

“Your year was definitely the scariest, though.” Hinata finishes, and Oikawa feels a little glow of pride, thinking about them: the four on court, the others waiting in the stands. All the training and matches and calls for more, before Hinata had even played a match. All to scare wild-eyed newbies. Good. He’s genuinely glad that that was something that came of it.

“I should hope so,” he replies glibly. Later, he’ll message the others, let them know.

An hour slips by, fast. Oikawa's almost getting used to standing at the edge of the ocean, looking towards the unknown, and laughing. His brain knows what's happening. The sky begins to pale, then brighten, and the sun comes up. For a moment the two of them only exist in the amber-soft light of dawn.

And then they get up, shake sand off themselves, and walk again to Oikawa’s hotel, where they will fork off, back into their own lives. But first, there has been confluence. When Oikawa says “see you later,” it is with the certainty that all rivers flow into the sea, and that all seas can be crossed.

///

Everyone he knows in Japan asks what Argentina is like. Everyone he meets in Argentina asks the same thing about Japan.

Oikawa can’t really answer either question: at first, Japan is too familiar and intricate for him to fit into a couple of remarks, and Argentina too new and indistinct for him to have much to say about it. Then, at some point, it switches. Japan fades in his mind, like a paper map left in the sun too long, and Argentina comes into focus.

It probably started when he began thinking about his apartment as home. “Home away from home,” says his mother, when he accidentally refers to it as such whilst calling her, and he agrees because he doesn’t want her to start fussing, but it isn’t. It’s just home, full stop.

He brought all the things that made his room in Sendai his over with him – a small but well thumbed selection of books, his most worn volleyball, dusty with a patina of finger prints, the collection of photos which he never needed to stick up during high school, but now has, here (there’s an Aoba Johsai’s team photo from his second year on his fridge, and it seems like the players grin at him when he makes a healthy dinner, and laugh when he’s feeling lazy and orders takeaway) – so that, on the few occasions that he visits his parent’s house, it feels like he’s staying in a guest room. Meanwhile his apartment is his, in a way nowhere has been before. Except perhaps the space behind the serve line when he does his run up. The apartment is better, though. It lasts longer.

Soon, the Argentina he knows extends all the way to the gym where CA San Juan trains. And if Argentina is a hall where he practices, then Japan is completely different: it’s a hall where he practiced. He gets to know his way to the gym, too. The buildings queued along the roads, the trees which reach up from the pavement, and the faces of the other tired people who get the 7:08 and 21:32 buses he often ends up on. The journey becomes second nature at a certain point, so instinctive that he sometimes doesn’t realise he’s made it until he’s at training.

And then he gets to know his teammates, and doesn’t have to know the bus route so well, because their starting libero, Sierra, gives him lifts, and tells Oikawa about the town he grew up in, and pulling himself out and up, up through the Argentine League, game by game, and then all about the Olympic tryouts he’s going to go to soon, and what they were like afterwards.

In return, over weeks, Oikawa accidentally does a pretty good job of explaining Japan, unfurling his life there inch by inch, through little details. Like how he finds it comforting that everyone calls Sierra by his surname, because even though Oikawa’s always ignored that formality, it’s familiar.

He gets to know more of San Juan too. Matías takes him under his wing and guides him on various team trips throughout the city, to restaurants and big suntrap squares and bars. Mostly bars. Drinking is also a new experience: Oikawa is pleased to find he’s still sociable when drunk, and if he gets more obnoxious than usual, then at least he never forgets chunks of the evening. He lapses into Japanese sometimes, after a few beers, but his sober Spanish is only improving, and he begins to use it more than English.

And sure, at first, it isn’t Argentina he knows at all, only San Juan, but then the matches and trips begin to add up over the months and – suddenly – years, until he knows the highways and the cities. He realises he could drive himself around Argentina better than Japan, which he mostly saw speeding past from backseats and train windows. And so he does. He gets a driver’s license and takes himself on trips to anywhere and everywhere in the country that is recommended to him.

He even stays after matches in Buenos Aires and drives along the edge of Rio de la Plata, as close to the water as the roads will let him, until he gets to the place where it meets the sea. The meeting point is underwhelming: just fields. But that’s okay. He carries on along the coast. Everywhere he goes is a key stop on his never ending quest for new places to be himself in.

By the time he’s left and returned to Argentina half-a-dozen times, always on short trips, for practice matches and holiday visits to Japan and even a couple of international tournaments, he realises that San Juan is now the solid ground he launches from and returns to. Meanwhile Sendai, like the room he grew up in, has been stripped of the things that made it his, because his friends and even his rivals – the certainty of meeting at the net was always its own kind of dependability – are scattered across the country now. 

Even Iwaizumi, who basically was his life in Sendai, can echo all his memories of growing up, has left. In California, he's closer to Oikawa in San Juan than he would be Japan. Twice, they both end up back at the same time, for the same holidays, but the whole time, it feels like they both have other places to be. Not away from each other, but out of ill-fitting houses and back to the different places they've separately made their own. They always spend all day together, multiple days, but it's somehow fleeting. The moment before a serve, again and again.

And so, at some point, when Blanco asks him if he has any thoughts as to what his next steps will be, Oikawa has a new answer.

///

The Argentine Volleyball Federation takes a break in the summer of 2016, as part of a prearranged plan carefully sidestepping any scheduling conflicts with the Olympics. Oikawa’s plane north avoids Brazil too. It skirts the coast of Peru instead, a kind of 5000 kilometre sidestep.

When they arrive at Iwaizumi’s apartment in Irvine, he flops onto the bed as though it’s his. Iwaizumi, following after with Oikawa’s suitcase, drops it to swat at him.

“Congratulations on managing to always be consistently annoying.”

“Consistency is an important skill to have, you know. Anyway, you miss it.”

In lieu of an answer, Iwaizumi drops himself onto the bed too, and for a moment they both lie there, staring at Iwaizumi’s weird – _American_ – ceiling. It’s white. It’s not really that weird.

“So,” begins Iwaizumi, pulling himself up onto his arm. Oikawa twists to look at him. “What do you want to do?”

Oikawa lets out a nasty cackle. “Are you really that boring? You live here, but you still need to ask me – a mere tourist – what to do for fun?”

Iwaizumi punches him in the shoulder. Ah, that makes him feel young. "Mean, Iwa-chan!" he says, and just then, he's eight and thirteen and eighteen all at once, all at the same time as being startlingly, starkly twenty-two.

Later, over a takeaway dinner which is early for Iwaizumi and late for Oikawa, Iwaizumi suggests that, “I could take you to meet Ushijima’s dad.”

“Hm.” Oikawa allows himself to look thoughtful for a second. “Perhaps. And perhaps it would be fun to try murder?”

Iwaizumi actually looks aghast at that. “That’s my future boss you’re threatening.”

“No! I meant you! I’ll murder you if you make me meet Ushiwaka’s dad!”

“Right. Although you know, Ushijima told me–“ (“Ushijima told me,” Oikawa parrots in his most annoying, childish, under-his-breath voice) “That it was thanks to his dad that he’s left handed. So he did kind of create your nemesis.”

“Ohh?”

Well. They don’t end up murdering anyone. They don't talk about high school, or volleyball, or anything of importance again that evening. They watch cheesy American TV, because it’s a fun novelty for Oikawa and irritating for Iwaizumi. The next day Iwaizumi shows him around the notable parts of Irvine, which are exactly the same as the places which came up when Oikawa googled ‘things to see in irvine’ when he was waiting for his flight.

“I'm a busy person, shittykawa,” Iwaizumi says, when Oikawa complains about this. “I know you haven't had to think since school, you jock, but it turns out college is actually pretty tough. Be thankful I’ve made time for you at all.”

As thanks, Oikawa gives him about half an hour where he avoids saying anything annoying, but then he gets right back to it.

It’s familiar, the lilting cheer of being unpleasant. Like, “I know I’m an inspiration to you, what with you copying me and moving abroad. If only you had my originality and hadn’t done something as boring as university!” and “Sometimes I get a little sad because I don’t have the most fans in the club, but then I remember, I still have more than you ever will!” and “I’ve been in South American for as long as we were at Aoba Johsai.”

Ah. That one’s not really designed to annoy. It’s just true.

“Yeah,” says Iwaizumi. He doesn’t say, ‘So what?’ but the question is there.

“Don’t you think that’s important?”

“It’s just what happens. Don’t be so sentimental.”

“I feel like we should note it somehow. Go to Matsushima. Meet up with Yuda and the others. Something.”

“That counts as sentimental, Oikawa. Also, we’re not in Japan.”

“Insightful as always, Iwa-chan.”

“I will make you drop your slushie.”

Argentina’s volleyball team have their first Olympic match that night. Oikawa’s played against a few members of the team in the league but, more importantly, Sierra made the squad, so Iwaizumi is able to make him feel obligated to watch. Japan played today too, but earlier, whilst they were out, a scheduling arrangement which Oikawa finds himself grateful for.

Argentina wins in straight sets, pulling out into a seven point difference in the last one. Oikawa ends up leaning towards the screen, and Iwaizumi does the exact same next to him, poised in matching anticipation for the next whistle.

It feels a bit like they’re watching one of the matches they would go see when they were really little – like the first time he saw Argentina play, actually. The two of them trotting into huge halls, pulled toward that unimaginable, unreachable court right at their centre. The pull never really stopped, for Oikawa. He's not sure about Iwaizumi, yet.

The win is like an exhale: they both slump back, weirdly exhausted.

“You picked a good place to move,” Iwaizumi concedes. “That was fun.”

“They’re less fun to play against.” Oikawa replies, darkly. One of the squad plays for the team in La Plata, and receives Oikawa’s serve like it's a habit he can't break.

“But good to play with. Sierra was awesome.”

“Tch, always so reasonable.”

“Yeah, I am, actually. Japan are playing later in the day on Thursday, by the way. So we should be able to catch the match then.”

“Such a buzzkill, Iwa-chan.” Oikawa says, fixing his eyes on the tv, where live footage of the courts being mopped is playing.

It takes Iwaizumi a moment to respond, long enough that Oikawa involuntarily glances at him to check he’s heard. He’s looking back at him blankly. “Are you saying you don’t want to watch it?”

“Yeah. I'm on holiday, Iwa-chan,” And then, to clarify both the point and that he is, definitely and completely, being a child about it, Oikawa adds, “Don’t wanna.”

Iwaizumi breathes out deeply through his nose.

Thursday is four days away. The first two go by as planned – Iwaizumi shows him around the University of California Irvine campus, and they take a trip to a regional park where they walk between huge walls of red rock, like the Mars in Oikawa’s imagination – except Iwaizumi keeps up a steady patter of needling about the whole Olympics thing: 

“Are you really still jealous? You’re being a brat, Oikawa. High school was forever ago. I want to support them. It’s good volleyball, it’ll be useful for, y’know, _your job._ Don't you miss home at all? And anyway, he is our kouhai, after all.”

Iwaizumi gives up, or decides they can have a truce, or something, because on Wednesday he stops. Wednesday is the day of their big trip out of Irvine: Oikawa has decided he wants to go to Venice Beach. This is partly because he really does like the idea of Italy, and this is sort of close, but mostly because he heard it mentioned in a film once. Iwaizumi agreed pretty easily to the suggestion, despite the poor reasoning behind it, although Oikawa thinks he’s just relieved that he isn’t insisting they go see San Francisco or something (Oikawa had thought about it, but it’s over ten hours away and even he has limits on how far he’s willing to push Iwaizumi’s patience). It’ll still take almost three hours to get to Venice though, and they’re going to have to take public transport because Iwaizumi refuses to drive towards LA. “Nothing wrong with a train!” Oikawa had chirped, making Iwaizumi frown, “They’re not like they are at home. Not at all.”

They start early, but Oikawa’s used to being four hours ahead and feels bright and awake whilst Iwaizumi dozes on his shoulder. The train is, indeed, slow, and it feels slower because of– oh, whatever it was Hanamaki told him about, on the way to Matsushima. New experiences buffering your brain. Although, that was also a train to the coast.

After the train, there’s a bus. Iwaizumi wakes up for that, and then chastises Oikawa for letting him sleep. “You’re not here for very long,” he says. “I’m sure you can stare out a window in Argentina anytime, but we can’t always talk like this.”

“It is a land of bountiful windows, it’s true,” Oikawa says, because absence has made his instinctual response – “Aw, you care!” – probably too true for either of them to deal with before noon.

When they get to the beach, Oikawa’s first thought is of Brazil. Sand, sea, sound and heat, all stretching away on either side. He wonders how Hinata’s doing. Does he have tickets to see any volleyball matches? Has he had a reunion this week too? Or are they ignoring the proximity? Despite himself, Oikawa thinks it’s nice that Hinata could be at the beach with a former teammate right now, looking towards the water in exact parallel with Oikawa and Iwaizumi. Different oceans, though.

“Japan’s over there,” Oikawa says, pointing across the Pacific and right back at Yuda, only three years out of sync. Iwaizumi tells him to quit being weird.

“I wouldn’t expect,” says Oikawa, grandly, “You to understand my deep and meaningful connection to the ocean.”

“Is it the same connection that you felt when you fell in the sea and then wouldn’t stop crying because you thought an octopus had pulled you over?”

“I was seven, Iwa-chan!”

“And now you’re twenty-two, and you're still as weird as ever. C’mon, let’s walk on the beach.”

Until now, they’ve been picking their way along the hard promenade which tightropes between the beach and buildings, taking it all in from this noncommittal space: the sunbathers and cyclists and tacky gift shops which Iwaizumi has a weakness for. Now, though, he pulls off his sandals and steps onto sand with them hanging from his hand, looking expectantly at Oikawa.

“Don’t tell me you’re too good to get your feet sandy. Because you’re definitely not.”

Oikawa only realises he’s spaced out when he blinks back to the moment, and with an obliging nod, pulls off his trainers. “I’m obviously coming, beaches are my natural habitat.” He handslessly shakes his sunglasses from his forehead onto his face and does his charming grin, which only makes Iwaizumi snort.

They walk down to the sea, weaving between people laid out in the sun and kids running amok, to where the water can lap at their toes, cold and real. Oikawa splashes at Iwaizumi, who laughs and kicks back. Before the octopus attacked him, this is what they’d done at the beach as kids, paddling around in the shallows. The aching, ocean-wide gap between then and now doesn’t close, but the path Oikawa took across it becomes a little clearer.

They make their way along the line of wet sand where the waves arrive on the beach, shoes in hands, sun on shoulders. It’s hot, but dry; Oikawa prefers it to the humidity of Rio.

They have no goal; Oikawa's taking a holiday from relentless ambition this week. “What do you want to do?” Iwaizumi had asked after they got off their bus, to which he'd replied “What is there to do?”. Turned out neither of them had thought further than _beach_.

And then, like an omen or a curse, always following him, Oikawa spots it. A volleyball net. He pulls Iwaizumi towards it, ignoring his excuses (that he’s not wearing sports stuff, that he’s still tired, that he knows Oikawa’s only suggesting this to embarrass him). People are playing, but they hustle – okay, Oikawa hustles – their way into the next match.

And it’s so fun. It takes Oikawa maybe five minutes to remember how to move on the sand, how to set the ball and shift his feet. Fine. More importantly, it takes Iwaizumi the whole match to even do a half-decent jump. Their opponents still only just win, but Oikawa will take any level of loss for such a brilliant opportunity to laugh at Iwaizumi. And. If the match they watched earlier in the week was like seeing a game as kids, this is the equivalent of dragging Iwaizumi to the park afterwards.

“That reflects worse on you,” Iwaizumi tells him, shaking sand off his calves before he plops down on the sand beside Oikawa. “You’re literally paid to win at volleyball. If I was CA San Juan, I’d ask for my money back.”

“Aren’t you lucky I provide you with my scintillating company for free, then?”

“Unlucky,” Iwaizumi mutters, still occupied with de-sanding.

Oikawa can’t really do anything with such a boring answer, so he doesn’t. He says, “I’ve never been to a beach facing west before.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t even look up. “That’s not true, I know you’ve been to Niigata, and that’s on the west coast.”

“Iwa-chan! Always undermining me! I was about to be profound.”

“Oh yeah, no, I realised that.”

“I meant that I hadn’t been in,” Oikawa gestures. “A long time.” Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything, which is basically permission for him to go ahead. “It feels weird, looking in this direction. Like I’m looking backwards. It’s just what I already know.”

“A lot’s changed there,” says Iwaizumi vaguely, before something clicks. The moment it does is visible on his face. “Ah. I still thought you were planning to come back to Japan.”

Okay, so. Oikawa was, but he’s not, not anymore. This is a recent realisation. It's not a recent decision: what he realised was that he’d already made up his mind to stay. He’s not sure when. At some point after looking at the river with Matías, and before looking at the ocean with Iwaizumi. Some point in the endless flow of practices and games, of new to old, again and again, the epiphany came that actually, he’s changed more than Japan ever will.

Iwaizumi knows this, Oikawa thinks. He knows what’s happening in Oikawa’s life better than anyone else. They still talk. He's the base Oikawa's building from, matches watched and played, in parks and gyms and stadiums. But he can't know everything: he’s never been to Argentina, he’s never chatted in Spanish or paid a bus fare in pesos, he’s never trained with an Olympian. There’s so much in Oikawa’s life that’s just his now. Is that what adulthood is? You wake up one day and realise you’re an island.

“A lot’s changed here,” Oikawa replies, mimicking Iwaizumi because of who he is on a fundamental level, before he tries to explain. “I don’t know. Well, I do. I’ve thought about it a lot. I just haven’t said it before.” He looks at the sea, before turning back to Iwaizumi. “I just think I’m becoming more than I could back there. I’m not satisfied, but I think could get there. And, I mean, you saw Argentina play. It’s a good place to be.”

Iwaizumi laughs, small and detached from any humour. It’s not a cold noise, though. Sort of vindicated, if anything. “Always moving forward, without hesitation. Yeah, that does sound about right. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“No, I guess I’m not. You could have just told me though, you didn’t need to use a lame ocean metaphor.”

“It– it wasn’t lame!”

“Yeah, it was,” Iwaizumi looks thoughtful. “I’m glad. That you’ve found somewhere like that. I would say it’s lucky, but you’re not really a lucky person–”

“Oi?”

“You make your own path, I mean. Not luck. Just effort.”

Oikawa has spent too long away from Iwaizumi; he doesn’t know how to respond to this much concentrated sincerity. So he says, “Huh,” and then, “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

On this beach, they don’t even wait for sunset, let alone sunrise. They watch some more beach volleyball, and then wander up and down the promenade. They head into a tacky gift shop, full of postcards with surfers on them and 'LA' caps, where Oikawa watches Olympic gymnasts flip on a tiny screen in the corner whilst Iwaizumi painstakingly picks out a t-shirt which has a big fish printed on it. For dinner, Oikawa insists on hotdogs, which seem appropriately American, and when Iwaizumi calls him a tourist, he agrees happily. Then he calls Iwaizumi a tourist too, because he's just bought a souvenir, hasn't he? and Iwaizumi agrees as well, which surprises Oikawa, somehow, but then doesn't. And then they begin to find their way back to Irvine and Iwaizumi’s apartment, tired and slightly tanner than they started out.

Iwaizumi stays awake this time. Oikawa’s probably more tired than him, but he’s stubborn and refuses to nap. Instead he just gives up on his filter and says whatever comes into his head, keeping up a stream of slight nonsense from the bus to the train.

He ends up telling Iwaizumi, “Getting the train like this reminds me of when we went to Matsushima.”

“You didn’t used to be this nostalgic.”

“I didn’t used to have things to be nostalgic about. Anyway,” he brightens. “Everything we know and have experienced is the past, Iwa-chan. What else is there to talk about?”

“Right. And you’re sure it has nothing to do with a certain recent big decision.”

“Don’t analyse me, I don’t trust your opinion.”

“I don’t trust yours.” Iwaizumi scowls, but then he pauses. “I was thinking, you see everything as a straight line, right? Like you’re aiming for one goal and that’s it. You’re going down the river to the sea, and you’re not a salmon so you can't swim back up it.”

Oikawa gives him a blank look. “I don’t know if I should be more offended that you think there’s no turning back for me, or at your weird metaphor.”

“You’re always using weird metaphors, I’m just trying to communicate with you! And I read a cool article about salmon recently.” Which explains the fish t-shirt. “Anyway, I don’t think you can’t turn back, actually. The river metaphor wasn’t helpful. It’s more like a train. Like, you’re going somewhere on it, but you still have a return ticket. So you can go home anytime. But there’s no point leaving the place you're gone to until you've done everything you want to do there, right?”

“I guess not.”

“Life’s not a river, I’m saying. I mean, it’s not a train either. It’s just yours. I think you should keep pushing on. If worst comes to worst, you can always go back. You're never going to be stuck somewhere forever.”

“Have you always been this much of a philosopher, Iwa-chan?”

“Yeah, actually. My wisdom's just always wasted on getting you not to be a total idiot.”

And the next day, they do watch Japan’s match. Well, Iwaizumi watches it: he whoops at spikes and aces, and anytime the commentators mention the name of a player he knows, or knows of. He’s clearly read summaries of the couple of matches Japan has played so far, the ones Oikawa’s made him miss, because he points out continuities and changes in tactics too. Oikawa looks at his phone mostly, and grunts responses, although he also watches the serves. He doesn’t want to. He just can’t look away from them.

“Unprofessionalkawa,” Iwaizumi calls him at one point, although any sting the name could have is removed by how stupid it sounds. It's much more advanced than any of the ones he used at school; is he upgrading, or has he forgotten their old rhythms?

Oikawa hasn't, and sticks his tongue out at him. Iwaizumi pokes him on the nose.

“You do realise you won’t be competing with him anymore, right? Only be competing against him. So you should probably do some research.”

Oikawa squirms, and doesn’t respond, but he lets Iwaizumi make him watch Japan’s next two games, and they see them qualify for quarterfinals the night before he flies home.

Only a few days after he gets back to San Juan, Oikawa meets up with some teammates to watch the semifinals. Japan didn’t make it through, but neither did Argentina, so Oikawa only gets slightly teased about it, and he can happily return it. Still, even though they’re out and “they sucked!” too, Oikawa gets quizzed on the Japanese team: whether he knows any gossip about them, how he thinks they’ll grow in the future. His teammates, like good professional volleyball players, have watched every match, and didn’t skip the quarterfinals the minute they were out of their best friend’s clutches, or anything. (He has it recorded, of course, and is planning to watch it, but not yet. Not until he either needs to, professionally, or feels less strange about the red uniform which he now knows he's never going to wear. Whichever comes first. Either way, the viewing will be a celebration.)

Oikawa hesitates before replying. The idea of simply denying that he’s ever heard of the Japanese team is tempting. He even entertains the idea that doing so would symbolise how he’s completely moved on from the place he grew up: Japan who? But, he realises almost instantly, that it’d probably mean the exact opposite.

So he tells his new, now, teammates that yes, he knows a few of them, at least by reputation. He was even in the same club as one, for a year. The young one. That’s it, number 20. He does serve kind of like me, you’re right.

And then he pulls out his phone and with great glee shows off the four-year-old, blurry picture of Kageyama bowing at him, taken in front of his nephew’s kiddie volleyball practice. He doesn’t say, he owes it all to me, or even, I’ll beat him again, someday, soon (although he still thinks it). Instead, he concedes, yeah, I’ve known him a long time now.

///

Another high school Hanamaki fact is that, after seven years, every cell in your body is replaced. Even at the time, Oikawa had thought that was very unsentimental. Still, he remembers it, five years after the last Olympics, almost ten since he left high school, when his flight lands in Tokyo airport. Maybe that’s why everything in Japan feels so new: it isn’t, but he is.

He meets up with Hanamaki in a coffee shop in Chuo a week later. Hanamaki complains about the location when they’re planning it, because it’s a trek from his apartment, but it’s not like he has anywhere to go during the day right now, and more importantly, it’s close to the Olympic Village. Which is where Oikawa is staying. He has an official pass and everything, which he waves at Hanamaki with a glee that’s as genuine as it is smug.

He mentions the seven year thing during their conversation, and Hanamaki pauses to consider him, tilting his head to the side and only mostly joking.

“I mean you still look mostly the same. Same face. Also, I think that seven years number isn’t actually right.”

“You lied to me?” Oikawa pouts.

“You’re really the same as always, huh. Anyway, surely having a fresh new nationality is a way more substantial change than any infinitesimal cell stuff?”

Oikawa licks his lips, a nervous gesture, although he’s not. “Mm. It’s definitely weird coming back like this.”

Hanamaki shrugs. “I, for one, am grateful you’ve given us an excuse to not support all those monsters who beat us in high school. It would have felt wrong cheering for them. And Yahaba’s bought face paint, so when we watch you we’ll be the most obnoxious Argentina fans outside of South America.”

Oikawa laughs. He’d gone to visit his parents immediately after landing in Japan, and whilst in Miyagi he'd actually seen Yahaba, who’d tagged along when he'd met with Matsukawa and Yuda, and had made it very clear that he was ready to support Argentina to the grave. Cue joke about Matsukawa’s job. 

Somehow, everything had been like always. Matsukawa had threatened to request ramen if Oikawa missed any serves and Yuda even got weepy at one point, when Oikawa admited he thought of him in Rio, and had then lent across the table to seriously declare that Oikawa is the winner, he is.

“The games haven’t happened yet,” Matsukawa had said, but then Yahaba ended up getting into it too, and Oikawa had to face down a decade of emotional investment he hadn't even realised had built up. Their messy enthusiasm made progress on detangling the heavy know of nerves stuck in his stomach, though.

Afterwards, after Yuda apologised profusely for having to work instead of watching Oikawa's daytime matches and Yahaba wished him luck in a vaguely threatening manner, Oikawa and Matsukawa had walked to the station together, and talked about Aoba Johsai – not volleyball, but school itself, teachers and exams and those stupid ties – and it was all just like he remembered. He’d gone back to his parent’s house feeling like he was walking home, the same as he always had, before.

“When’s your first game, by the way?” Hanamaki asks, in Tokyo.

“You haven’t got it memorised?” Oikawa replies, mock offended.

“Oh no, I have. I just wanted to see how you’d react. Maybe you have changed – I thought you’d be more dramatic,” He holds up his fingers, and puts one down for every date he says. “Opening ceremony on Friday. First match on Sunday. Prelim matches every other day for a week. Quarterfinals the Thursday after – that’s when you’ll get your first chance to play Japan – then semifinals on Saturday and finals on Monday. I’m basing the next three weeks of my life around you.”

Oikawa doesn’t comment on the fact Hanamaki has worked out matches all the way up to finals. Instead, he asks, “Am I supposed to be impressed? I’ve based the last twenty-seven years of my life around me, so I win.”

Hanamaki laughs. “Yeah, you have always been selfish. And to think you play a team sport.”

Back in high school, Oikawa had trained ‘I'm counting on you’ into himself, until saying – and meaning – it had become instinctual in those moments between team talk and match. Back then, his limitations were just misty certainties in the distance, but he had at least worked out that he needed the five others on court to get close to what he wanted. Is it selfishness, if it's totally dependent on other people? He thinks it is. He doesn’t mind.

Just before Hanamaki leaves for the subway, Oikawa says, “I’d never have done it without you.” Then he adds, “You, plural, that is. The whole team,” to stop Hanamaki getting too big headed.

“Oh, I know,” Hanamaki replies, proving that it’s too late. “I think there’s a lot of people you could say that about, though. You’re hardly playing in the Olympics because of Seijou. I wish. Maybe then I could have been recruited.”

Oikawa hums a noncommittal response, and on his walk back to the Village, finds himself thinking of the islands in Matsushima. Over time they erode and get built on, they become new, but there must be solid rock which survives each transformation. The sea can’t remake you completely. Something always stays the same, in your core. Something always remains of each change, too.

He sees Iwaizumi almost every day he stays in the Olympic Village. For the first time in so, so long, they live in the same place. That doesn’t mean they fall into old habits, or even spend much time with each other; they’re both busy with their respective teams for most of the day, urgently practicing before it all starts. Tokyo feels swollen and even hotter than normal, and its sports facilities are crammed, so the Argentinian team end up bussing out to a school in the suburbs north of the city. His teammates look curiously around the place, commenting on idiosyncrasies that Oikawa thought were normal. Inside, it feels just like his old school gym, and he serves over and over again.

In the evenings, though, they get free time – Oikawa complains about this, once, and Iwaizumi scowls, and tells him, “I know I should be rooting for you to overwork yourself now, but seriously?” – so Oikawa always excuses himself and makes his way to one of the common areas to meet Iwaizumi. They often find each other in the Plaza, the hub of the Village. It’s made entirely from wood donated from each of Japan’s prefectures, the beams stamped with the name of the one which donated it, and they spend a while looking for Miyagi's.

“Like bug hunting!” Oikawa says cheerfully.

“You hated bug hunting,” Iwaizumi replies. “You always complained, and then we ended up playing volleyball instead.”

“I’ve changed,” Oikawa retorts, but he gets bored five minutes later, and they never do find Miyagi.

They don’t talk much about volleyball, except to speculate about the other teams they'll both face. Oikawa’s teammates call him a traitor when they find out where he’s disappearing off to, and he’s told frankly by an assistant coach not to tell Iwaizumi anything, in case he can implement it into Japan’s tactics, but in reality, there’s nothing Oikawa could tell him. Iwaizumi already knows how Oikawa plays and how he works with the spikers: he was one of them. He was the first.

As for the Japanese team, Iwaizumi barely mentions it, although he’s obviously excited about them. He gets the same look as when he briefly mentions one of the players as when he found that stupid picture of a pale chub, an oikawa fish, as a kid. All bright eyed. He doesn’t ever bring any of them to meet Oikawa though, which is good because Oikawa doesn’t want to see them (so there), but is also annoying because he wants to be smug and show them, look, I’m here too.

There is one evening where the setter-who’s-not-Kageyama is talking to Iwaizumi when Oikawa arrives. He’s doing a lot of flowery gestures, but Oikawa doesn't know what about, because the guy cuts himself off when he sees him. Maybe he's injured, Oikawa idly hopes.

“I saw your profile,” Miya Atsumu (Oikawa knows his name, obviously he does, and has for years, even before Hinata started playing with him) tells Oikawa, in lieu of a greeting, and Iwaizumi huffs. "Real touching."

“Don’t tell him that, it’ll go to his head.”

The profile, published in the sports section of one of Japan’s biggest lifestyle magazines, follows Argentina’s setter as he prepares for his homecoming, returning to play in Japan for the first time since he left after high school to pursue his dreams, dreams that ended up leading to a new nationality. It’s a fascinating story, made relevant by the Olympics, complicated by long-standing rivalries with two of Japan’s favourite players and boosted by his natural charm. It makes him sound like a hero, if not a national one. Or so Oikawa’s been told. He’s also been mercilessly mocked for it by almost everyone he’s ever set to, but that's okay: it just means more readers.

He smiles his nicest and most annoying smile, and thanks Miya. “I saw your profile too,” he says, and Iwaizumi rolls his eyes.

It seems to catch Miya off guard, at least. “What profile? I’ve not had any profile lately. Have I?” He turns, confused, to Iwaizumi, who gives him a sceptical, how-would-I-know look. Oikawa feels a bit smug about that. Iwaizumi knows about all of his magazine features.

“Ah, guess I'm thinking of one from high school,” he clarifies nonchalantly. “I always kept an eye on the up-and-comers, you know. To see if they ever end up anywhere.”

Oikawa is going for a suave sort of ‘I know who you are and I’m coming for you’ thing, but from the way Iwaizumi mouths, “You’re being embarrassing,” from behind Miya’s shoulder, he thinks maybe he misses.

Still, Miya looks kind of riled, and returns a particularly nasty grin. There's a slight twitch in his eye. “Really, huh? I knew you had to be more of a weirdo than you seemed. But hey, now we’ve both ended up here, you better watch out.”

"Atsumu," Iwaizumi cuts in. "Much as I understand the urge, you really shouldn't threaten violence on a member of another team."

"I meant on the court!"

“I'm not sure Atsumu is a particularly useful contact to have,” Iwaizumi says, after he leaves, “But are you really going to burn all your bridges with the Japanese team?”

Oikawa looks at him, mock innocent. “That was me making a connection, Iwa-chan. And anyway, I still have Shoyo.”

**shoyo [22:15]:** you met atsumu-san!!

 **shoyo [22:16]:** he doesn’t like you haha

 **shoyo [22:29]:** we’re going to beat you!!! (that’s from everyone!)

**iwa-chan [22:41]:** i just had to tell a bunch of adult athletes to go to bed because they were caught up telling stories about how annoying you are, oikawa

 **mattsun [22:50]:** getting in their heads, very nice

 **makki [23: 04]:** icon

 **oikawa [06:17]:** ^.^

The evening before Argentina’s first match, Oikawa is restless. All the adrenaline from the opening ceremony the night before, from marching in his blue tracksuit through a stadium shaking with red and white flags, and waving to a camera broadcasting live across the whole damn world, is still in his body, and it's starting to curdle. Without mentioning it, Iwaizumi leads the way outside and across Harumi Island, where the Olympic Village has been built, to its tip.

There’s a little park there, a scrub of green where the stretching, spreading buildings (ten thousand people are hosted in the Village; ten thousand other lives dedicated to getting here – and countless others which haven’t made it, although Oikawa tries to shut down that train of thought fast) give way to Tokyo Bay.

Looking out towards the water, Iwaizumi leans against the railings that stop any lost athletes from accidentally entering diving events, and Oikawa copies him. It’s not really an expansive view, penned in by yet more buildings, with Odaiba island on one side and Minato on the other, and the Rainbow Bridge strung between them where Oikawa feels open water should be. Still, it feels good to be outside, where he can almost smell the sea. The thought that all water is the same comes to him.

It’s the same, even if he’s somewhere else. Volleyball is still volleyball, whether it’s a practice match within the familiar angles of Aoba Johsai’s gym, or his first game at the Olympics.

And, okay, no, Oikawa doesn’t really believe that. This isn’t the ocean off Brazil, or somewhere in Italy that he’ll visit, one day, someday. It’s not even Matsushima Bay, which feels impossibly close here, though he’s not sure if he’ll get to go on this trip. Tokyo, right now, isn’t like anywhere else, and the stage he’s standing on isn’t either. But none of those places shook his skills loose and left him with nothing. There’s no reason why he can’t train this status – Olympic athlete – into himself, like he’s trained himself to be Argentinian and Aoba Johsai’s captain and a volleyball player. It’s just an addition to who he already is; he just has to polish it into habit. Make being himself into instinct.

“Are you worried about losing?” Iwaizumi asks.

“Not anymore,” Oikawa replies brightly, “I think I’ve worked through it.”

“Tough. Because you’re getting my speech anyway,” interrupts Iwaizumi. “You’re not allowed to lose, because you have to get through and play Japan. I don’t care about all _your_ stupid rivalries, I just want my team to beat you. Like I promised.”

Oikawa blinks at him. “That’s definitely one of your worse speeches. In fact, I don’t even know if I’d call it a speech–”

“Shut up.” Iwaizumi turns to Oikawa and raises his fist. Oikawa bumps it like he always has, and will. “We’re going to demolish you.”

“We’ll demolish you first.”

“No way,” says Iwaizumi, but he’s laughing.

///

Oikawa has the first serve of their first match. When he walks, alone, from the team huddle to the serve line, he thinks of who will be waiting for him on the other side of the net. Hinata, all drive and unexpected moves, on court and off. Kageyama, who he’ll never be able to stand next to on court, and Ushijima, who he never wants to. It’s familiar; rivalry is connection, sometimes. And when it’s been a part of your life for so long, it becomes almost familial. He’s gone halfway around the world and replaced all his cells and expanded all his experiences, but he’s still the same. Nothing is new. Maybe his life isn’t a bullet train from one spot to another, maybe it’s a subway loop, returning to the same place. Except.

Except right now, he’s about to serve against Italy, a team he’s never met, a place he’s never been. And he's never been _here_ before. This match, this squad, this shiny new venue, this serve line, this opponent. Right now. Of course. If he can’t defeat the opponent in front of him, how will he defeat the one that lies behind him as much as it does in front.

**makki [09:13]:** good luck today!

 **mattsun [09:22]:** grind them into the dirt

 **iwa-chan [09:25]:** yeah

"Mucha suerte!" calls Sierra over his shoulder.

Oikawa raises the ball. Life’s a beach.

When he serves, it spins through the air with all the gravity of a planet which knows exactly where it’s going, but is in no rush to get there.

And later, he’ll do it again; another, and another, and another.

**Author's Note:**

> some assorted notes!  
> • yuda appears in the extra chapter '[The Fight Isn't Over](https://ladder-chan.tumblr.com/post/125829628173/extra-story-from-vol-17-the-fight-isnt-over-raw)', which appears at the end of volume 17 (i'm working from the linked translation tho, bc i actually didnt know it had been officially translated until after i finished this lol). sorry to the other third years sawauchi and shido. their final exams were on a different day rip  
> • the oikawa fish thing is also from an extra. it's very important to me that you imagine iwaizumi having this [this exact expression](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJmfrolUYAAulwh.jpg) when he talks abt team japan  
> • the olympic village plaza having stamps on wood is [a real thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd_UZC5Pz7s)! very funky  
> • i’ve not been anywhere mentioned in this fic… truly why did i choose to make it so rooted in rl geography. i spent a lot of time on googlemaps  
> • i miss the sea… and taking the train… and oikawa – or at least i did until he returned and forced me to totally reformulate the ending of this  
> • disclaimer: i did not in fact write 13k in the 2 days since chap 402 came out and revealed oikawa final boss. i just left gaps towards the end in case something happened like that happened, because if i know oikawa (up to you to judge, i guess) i figured that’s the kinda stunt he’d pull  
> • further disclaimer: i've also changed a couple of things since initially posting this, as my understanding of what 402 meant for oikawa clarified/i caught mistakes  
> • i’ve always wanted to write oikawa so i was like, i’ll just write a quick piece to tick that off the bucket list and then move on. this is 4x as long as i anticipated and i totally wrote it in a blur. sometimes u just gotta get five years of feelings out  
> • this is completely un-betaed and im sure to have missed some errors, so pls forgive
> 
> thank you for making it this far! i really hope you enjoyed.  
> edit: also if you want to see what the trains oikawa got in miyagi and california look like irl, i made a fic graphic featuring them, so you can [check that out](https://twitter.com/datekouuu/status/1315762534159396864)!


End file.
